Various - Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 65, No. 403, May, 1849

This is a long extract, but it could not be abridged, and the importance of the subject required it. Mr Wakefield has some remarks upon the necessity of supplying religious instruction and the means of public worship to our colonies, with which we cannot but cordially agree. But we rubbed our eyes, and read the following passage twice over, before we were quite sure that we had not misapprehended it: "I am in hopes of being able, when the proper time shall come for that part of my task, to persuade you that it would now be easy for England to plant sectarian colonies – that is, colonies with the strong attraction for superior emigrants, of a peculiar creed in each colony" – (P. 160.) We thought that it was one of the chief boasts, and most fortunate characteristics of our age, that men of different sects, Presbyterians and Episcopalians, Independents and Baptists, had learned to live quietly together. It is a lesson that has been slowly learnt, and through much pain and tribulation. What is the meaning of this retrograde movement, this drafting us out again into separate corps? Possibly the fact of the whole settlement being of one sect of Christians may tend at first to promote harmony – although even this cannot be calculated upon; but differences of opinion are sure, in time, to creep in; and the ultimate consequence would be, that such a colony, in a future generation, would be especially afflicted with religious dissensions, and the spirit of persecution. It would have to learn again, through the old painful routine, the lesson of mutual toleration. We suspect that Mr Wakefield is so engrossed with his favourite subject of colonisation, that, if the Mormonites were to make a good settlement of it, he would forgive them all their absurdities; perhaps congratulate them on their harmony of views.

We have hitherto regarded colonisation in its general, national, and legislative aspect: the following passage takes us into the heart of the business as it affects the individuals themselves, of all classes, who really think of emigrating. It is thus Mr Wakefield describes "the charms of colonisation: " —

"Without having witnessed it, you cannot form a just conception of the pleasurable excitement which those enjoy who engage personally in the business of colonisation. The circumstances which produce these lively and pleasant feelings are, doubtless, counteracted by others productive of annoyance and pain; but, at the worst, there is a great deal of enjoyment for all classes of colonists, which the fixed inhabitants of an old country can with difficulty comprehend. The counteracting circumstances are so many impediments to colonisation, which we must examine presently. I will now endeavour to describe briefly the encouraging circumstances which put emigrants into a state of excitement, similar to that occasioned by opium, wine, or winning at play, but with benefit instead of fatal injury to the moral and physical man.

"When a man, of whatever condition, has finally determined to emigrate, there is no longer any room in his mind for thought about the circumstances that surround him: his life is for some time an unbroken and happy dream of the imagination. The labourer – whose dream is generally realised – thinks of light work and high wages, good victuals in abundance, beer and tobacco at pleasure, and getting in time to be a master in his trade, or to having a farm of his own. The novelty of the passage would be a delight to him, were it not for the ennui arising from want of occupation. On his arrival at the colony, all goes well with him. He finds himself a person of great value, a sort of personage, and can indulge almost any inclination that seizes him. If he is a brute, as many emigrant labourers are, through being brutally brought up from infancy to manhood, he lives, to use his own expression, 'like a fighting cock,' till gross enjoyment carries him off the scene. If he is of the better sort, by nature and education, he works hard, saves money, and becomes a man of property – perhaps builds himself a nice house, glories with his now grand and happy wife in counting the children, the more the merrier, and cannot find anything on earth to complain of, but the exorbitant wages he has to pay. The change for this class of men being from pauperism, or next door to it, to plenty and property, is indescribably, to our apprehensions almost inconceivably, agreeable.

"But the classes who can hardly imagine the pleasant feelings which emigration provides for the well-disposed pauper, have pleasant feelings of their own when they emigrate, which are perhaps more lively in proportion to the greater susceptibility of a more cultivated mind to the sensations of mental pain and pleasure. Emigrants of cultivated mind, from the moment when they determine to be colonists, have their dreams, which, though far from being always, or ever fully realised, are, I have been told by hundreds of this class, very delightful indeed. They think with great pleasure of getting away from the disagreeable position of anxiety, perhaps of wearing dependence, in which the universal and excessive competition of this country has placed them. But it is on the future that their imagination exclusively seizes. They can think in earnest about nothing but the colony. I have known a man of this class, who had been too careless of money here, begin, as soon as he had resolved on emigration, to save sixpences, and take care of bits of string, saying 'everything will be of use there .' There! it is common for people whose thoughts are fixed 'there,' to break themselves all at once of a confirmed habit – that of reading their favourite newspaper every day. All the newspapers of the old country are now equally uninteresting to them. If one falls in their way, they perhaps turn with alacrity to the shipping lists, and advertisements of passenger ships, or even to an account of the sale of Australian wool, or New Zealand flax; but they cannot see either the parliamentary debate, or the leading article which used to embody their own opinions, or the reports, accidents, and offences, of which they used to spell every word. Their reading now is confined to letters and newspapers from the colony, and books relating to it. They can hardly talk about anything that does not relate to 'there.'" – (P. 127.)

A man is far gone, indeed, when he has given up his Times ! This zeal for emigration amongst the better classes, and especially amongst educated youths, who find the avenues to wealth blocked up in their own country, is, we apprehend, peculiar to our day, and amongst the most novel aspects which the subject of colonisation assumes. How many of these latter find their imaginations travelling even to the antipodes! Where shall we colonise? is a question canvassed in many a family, sometimes half in jest, half in earnest, till it leads to the actual departure of the boldest or most restless of the circle. Books are brought down and consulted; from the ponderous folio of Captain Cook's voyages – which, with its rude but most illustrative of prints, was the amusement of their childhood, when they would have thought a habitation in the moon as probable a business as one in New Zealand – to the last hot-pressed journal of a residence in Sydney; and every colony in turn is examined and discussed. Here climate is so delicious you may sleep without hazard in the open air. Sleep! yes, if the musquitoes let you. Musquitoes – oh! Another reads with delight of the noble breed of horses that now run wild in Australia, and of the bold horsemanship of those who drive in the herd of bullocks from their extensive pasturage, when it is necessary to assemble in order to number and to mark them. The name of the thing does not sound so romantic as that of a buffalo-hunt; but, armed with your tremendous whip, from the back of a horse whom you turn and wind at pleasure, to drive your not over-tractable bullocks, must task a good seat, and a steady hand, and a quick eye. A third dwells with a quieter delight on the beautiful scenery, and the pastoral life so suitable to it, which New Zealand will disclose. Valleys green as the meadows of Devonshire, hills as picturesque as those of Scotland, and the sky of Italy over all! and the aborigines friendly, peaceable. Yes, murmurs one, until they eat you. Faugh! but they are reformed in that particular. Besides, Dr Dieffenbach says, here, that "they find Europeans salt and disagreeable." Probably they had been masticating some tough old sailor, who had fed on junk all his life, and they found him salt enough. But let no one in his love of science suggest this explanation to them; let us rest under the odium of being salt and disagreeable.